Supervisor
Marco Formisano
Professor of Latin Literature in the Department of Literary Studies, a senior member of the GCLA (Ghent Center for Late Antiquity) and a member of the Doctoral School “Migrazioni, Differenze, Giustizia Sociale” at the University of Palermo, Italy. Before coming to Ghent I held positions and fellowships in France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the USA, experiences which have enabled me to appreciate a range of academic systems, languages and styles of thought and have made me particularly sensitive to topics related to intellectual migration. In my current book project, tentatively entitled “The Nomadic Alternative: Another Way of Looking at Classics and Beyond,” I approach the interpretation of ancient and modern literature from a nomadic perspective which is conceived as fundamentally different from the conscious and unconscious sedentarism broadly characterizing scholarly inquiry. This project is also inspired by many visits to Brazil, whose history, culture and language distinctly influence my current work.
Kim Dierckx
Kim Dierckx works as a doctoral assistant at the Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University) and is also affiliated with the interdisciplinary Center for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) as a researcher. As part of his PhD, he examined the “super-diverse” society. Specifically, he investigated how social institutions can achieve social harmony in diverse societies through the application of procedural justice. His current research focuses on the mutual relationships between ethnic-cultural minorities and the factors that can positively influence these relationships.
Katrien Vanthomme
Katrien Vanthomme obtained a PhD in Social Sciences (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2017) and a master in sociology (Ghent University, 2008). She is an Assistant Professor Epidemiology and Prevention of Cancer within the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at Ghent University. In this position, she is developing a research line on social inequalities in care throughout the cancer continuum and the development of tailored interventions according to the principles of proportionate universalism.Katrien is, amongst others, co-promotor of a project on the implementation of community health workers as a strategy to increase breast cancer screening participation among underscreened women in Flanders; a project on social inequalities in untimely follow-up of abnormal pap smears; a project studying disparities in the use of preventive health services across migrant backgrounds in Belgium; and a project on social inequalities in HPV vaccination in adolescents.
Walaa Ammar
Walaa Ammar is a postdoctoral fellow at ICRH, Ghent University, where she coordinates research activities and contributes to strategic and operational planning. Her research focuses on the intersections of health and human rights and the sociology of health and illness, particularly in contexts of conflict and complex emergencies. She earned her PhD from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University in 2024. Her doctoral research examined the experiences of Palestinian women diagnosed with breast cancer, exploring their journeys through an intersectional lens of structural discrimination using a mixed-methods approach. Before joining ICRH, Walaa worked as an Advocacy Officer with WHO, specializing in information management, research, and evidence-based advocacy. She also holds a Master’s in Development Studies with a specialization in conflict and social justice from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Ruben Wissing
Ruben is a postdoctoral researcher and teaching assistant at the Migration Law Research Group. His research interests are situated at the intersection of refugee, human rights and international law, and entails doctrinal analysis, socio-legal research, critical and postcolonial perspectives and alternative knowledge production. His work focusses on transnational and regional law and policy dynamics in and at the borders of Europe. Ruben is member of the CESSMIR steering group, and is affiliated to the Human Rights Centre and to the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London. He completed a PhD on the protection of refugees in Morocco from a multidisciplinary perspective. He teaches the course Law and Society.Ruben holds a master in Law and a bachelor in Philosophy. He practiced as a migration lawyer, as a legal officer and policy coordinator in various Belgian non-profits, worked for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and is a co-founder of NANSEN, the Belgian Refugee Council.
Stijn Joye
Stijn Joye is associate professor at the Department of Communication Sciences (UGent) and member of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Center for Journalism Studies and Health, Media & Society. He was a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Visiting Fellow at LSE and at Sichuan University. His areas of research include international news reporting with a focus on the representation of suffering and crises alongside an interest in issues of domestication, colonial heritage and the practices of seriality and artistic imitation in film. Joye is Associate Editor of International Communication Gazette, book review editor of Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, former chair of ECREA’s International & Intercultural Communication section, current vice-chair of ‘TWG Ethics of Mediated Suffering’ and treasurer of NeFCA and vice-chair of NeFCA’s Intercultural Communication & Diversity section. In 2020, he joined the FWO Review College 2021-2023.
Thomas Spijkerboer
Thomas Spijkerboer (1963) is research professor of Migration Law at Ghent University, where he leads the project Global Migration Justice: Beyond conflicting approaches to migration and international human rights law (MIGJUST).He studies at the University of Amsterdam (1981-1986), and during his studies was a volunteer at the Stichting Rechtswinkel Amsterdam. From 1986 until 1993 he worked at the Advokatenkollektief Zaanstreek. Between 1993 and 2000 he was lecturer of Migration Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, where he wrote is PhD thesis Gender and Refugee Status. From 2000 until 2024 he was professor of Migration Law at the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Wendelien Vantieghem
Wendelien is assistant professor at the Centre for Diversity & Learning (Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts & Philosophy-Ghent University). Her work focuses on inequity in education based on gender, sexual orientation, multilingualism, socio-economic background, ethnicity, and disability, as well as teachers’ attitudes and competences with regards to diversity.During her post-doctoral work, Wendelien analysed diversity, (in)equity and inclusion from a range of perspectives. This included work on the “Diversity Barometer for Education” and “Diversity Screening for Education” at the Center for Diversity and Learning. She was also research coordinator of the “Potential-Power to teach all!”-project at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences), post-doctoral assistent at the research unit Equity in Health (Department of Public Health & Primary Care-UGent), and visiting professor for the course “”Diversity & inclusion in educational settings”” at VUB.
Sara Willems
Sara Willems leads the research group on equity in (primary) health care. This interdisciplinary research group leads or partners in numerous national and international research projects on the relation between health care organisation and equity in access to care, treatment and outcomes of care; and the buffering effect of social capital in the relation between social status and health inequity. Publication list: https://biblio.ugent.be. Sara Willems is involved in the development and the implementation of the educational tracks “health equity and diversity” in the medical program at Ghent University. Sara Willems is involved in the design and implementation of several local community health projects and is often consulted by local health authorities. She is chief executive officer of “WGC Watersportbaan”, a community health centre in one of the deprived areas in Ghent.
Sarah Van Hoof
Sarah Van Hoof is associate professor of Dutch and multilingual communication. Her research is situated in the domain of sociolinguistics. Central themes in her work are language ideology and language politics in postwar and present-day Flanders, language policy and practices in public institutions and the role of language in the employment of non-Dutch-speaking newcomers.
Sorana Toma
Sorana Toma is Associate Professor in Migration Studies at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care and a member of CESSMIR. Her research focuses on the intersection of migration and health(care), with particular attention to ethno-racial inequalities in the uptake of preventive healthcare, and the impact of migration experiences — including involuntary immobility — and discrimination on mental health and well-being. She is (co-)PI of several international research consortia, including the PREVENT TOO and PATHWAYS projects. Sorana also coordinates and contributes to several interdisciplinary courses on migration and on ethno-racial inequalities in health and healthcare.
Peter Stevens
Peter A. J. Stevens (BA, MA Ghent University, MA, PhD Warwick University) is Professor in Qualitative Research Methods at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium). Stevens’ research interests cover the areas of sociology of education and race/ethnic relations. His work has been published in leading journals in the field of education, race and ethnic relations and sociology, including Review of Educational Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Sociology of Education. He is editor with Gary Dworkin of The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education (Palgrave, 2019) and editor of Qualitative Data Analysis. Key Approaches (Sage, 2023). Stevens is currently supervising research on ethnic in-out group relationships in school settings.
Renata Enghels
Renata Enghels is appointed as a professor of Hispanic and Contrastive Romance linguistics at Ghent University, and applies corpus research within a functional and cognitive perspective. She is particularly interested in the linguistic outcomes of phenomena of language and culture contact as a result of migration. In this respect she focusses on the language (including multilingualism and codeswitching), identity and social position of Hispanics, in the US and other regions. She is spokesperson of the interuniversity research group CROS, and is currently directing PhD research in the domains of the grammar of codeswitching and the linguistic representation of (Latin-American) migration in the media.
Robin Vandevoordt
Robin Vandevoordt is an Associate Professor in Migration studies at CESSMIR. He leads ethnographic research on two topics: social movements in solidarity with people on the move, and the role of different actors entangled in migration and integration policies. Before joining Ghent University, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre and at the University of Antwerp’s Centre for Research on Ecological and Social Change (CRESC).
Rossella Marino
Rossella Marino has obtained her PhD in Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University in September 2023, being also a PhD fellow at UNU-CRIS since 2019. Her research has revolved around European migration governance in The Gambia. For that, she has spent extended fieldwork visits in the West African country. This research has been published in top-tier migration-related journals, such as the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and the Journal of Refugee Studies. Rossella has presented at relevant migration- and Africa-related academic conferences, including IMISCOE and ECAS. She currently teaches Social Work and Social Pedagogical literature at Ghent university. Prior to her PhD, Rossella was research intern at UNU-CRIS and VUB’s Institute for European Studies (IES).
Melissa Ceuterick
Melissa Ceuterick is a postdoctoral researcher at Hedera UGent. In her PhD she focused on the impact of migration on traditional medicine use among people of Andean descent in the UK (Bradford University, 2009). Her research is situated at the intersections between 1) medication use and identity and 2) migration and health. She coordinates and supervises qualitative research in these areas, i.e. Belspo BENZONET, BENZOCARE, REMEDI; IBOF Opioid-related Stigma and FWO Red Noses Culture-Sensitive Stigma Survey, STAMINA. Since 2017 she is a lecturer-in-charge of the Health Sociology and Social Demography Seminar (UGent), where students develop a Community Service Learning project on health or migration, and of various health sociology courses (UGent-VUB). As of 2023 she is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Society for Health and Medical Sociology.
Michael Meeuwis
Michael Meeuwis (°1968) is professor at the department of African Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of Antwerp with a sociolinguistic-ethnographic study of the languages used by the Congolese in Belgium and Flanders in particular. His areas of interest include the social, anthropological and sociolinguistic ontologies of the Congolese diaspora, including South-North but also South-South (within Africa) migration patterns; the role of the Congolese language Lingala in and for Congolese communities abroad; the history of Lingala; language policy in the DRC; discourse analysis in the context of migration; and others. He is a member of ‘Babil’, Fedasil’s expert panel for language and communication in reception centers in Belgium and extends his expertise to refugee organizations and services in several European countries. For his Lingala classes at Ghent University, he closely collaborates with Belgians of Congolese origin.
Katrijn Maryns
I am associate professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication My linguistic-ethnographic research examines multilingual practices and linguistic inequality in institutional contexts of asylum and migration. I am the author of ‘The asylum speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure’ (Routledge 2006) and co-editor of the book series ‘Translation, Interpreting and Social Justice in a Globalised World’ (Multilingual Matters). I am supervising several projects on language and migration, including research on multilingual communication between immigration lawyers and their refugee clients, on migrants and refugees with a linguistically vulnerable profile (speakers of lesser diffused languages, low literacies), on video-remote language assistance for migrants and refugees and on the multilingual communication between unaccompanied refugee minors and their legal guardian.
Kristiane Van Lierde
Kristiane Van Lierde is full professor at the Ghent University, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences (center for Speech and Language Sciences). Her research expertise is the assessment and treatment of voice, resonance and articulation disorders (especially in resource poor countries). In this field of study; she authored until now 200+ peer-reviewed publications. Moreover she was co-supervisor of a VLIR-UOS project in Uganda and this project resulted in a sustainable logopedic center for the treatment of cleft palate children. Her clinical expertise is illustrated by her leading role as speech language pathologist of the craniofacial team and the voice clinic of the Ghent University Hospital. Furthermore she is a member of the Royal Acdemy of Medicine of Belgium.
Lesley Hustinx
Lesley Hustinx is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Social Theory at the Sociology Department of Ghent University. Her primary areas of interest are social theory, political sociology, critical citizenship studies, and the sociology of the nonprofit sector and volunteering. Her research focuses on contemporary developments in citizenship and participation, including the citizenship practices of newcomers, the underrepresentation of ethnic groups in blood donations, and social inequality in volunteering.
Louis Lippens
Louis Lippens is an FWO postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, specialising in labour economics with a focus on measuring, understanding, and addressing labour market discrimination. Holding a master’s degree in work psychology from Ghent University, his academic path led to a joint PhD in economics and sociology from Ghent University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His doctoral research analyses the dynamics of labour market discrimination, examining its extent and underlying mechanisms. His postdoctoral project investigates whether discrimination weakens under market competition. Louis’ scholarly contributions are published in journals such as European Economic Review, Labour Economics, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. As an affiliated researcher at UGent @ Work, he is also involved in interdisciplinary research projects exploring significant labour market challenges and aims to contribute to evidence-based policy advice.
Ine Lietaert
Ine Lietaert holds a PhD in Social Work and works as an associate professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy where she teaches International Social Work and Mobility Justice. She combines this with a professorship in Migration Governance and Regional Integration Studies at the United Nations University- CRIS, where she coordinates the Migration and Social Policy research cluster. Her research focuses on the governance of ‘welfare’ and ‘mobility’. More specifically, she focusses on the impact of geopolitics, political economy and knowledge production – both globally and locally – on social work and social support, with particular attention for refugees, returnees, unaccompanied minors and (internally) displaced persons. She centralises the impact of im/material bordering processes and imaginaries on people’s lives, paying attention to their sense of belonging, their survival strategies and their access to social support, through a socio-spatial research approach.
Marlies Casier
Marlies Casier is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Work, where she conducts research on solidarity with people on the move. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at Ghent University, with a thesis on the transnational political activism of Kurds from Turkey. She has published extensively on her research in academic journals and books. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, a Master’s degree in Moral Sciences and a Master’s degree in Conflict and Development Studies. After completing her PhD, Marlies worked for 12 years as international policy officer at Sensoa, the Flemish centre of expertise on sexual health, which she combined with a position as a guest lecturer at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, where she taught in the Master of Science in Conflict and Development Studies, the Master of Sociology and the Erasmus Mundus Master in Global Studies.
Ines Keygnaert
Ines Keygnaert is professor of sexual and reproductive health and coordinates the research line on violence and violation of sexual and reproductive health rights, as well as on gender and sexual health promotion in hard-to-reach, vulnerable and/or minority groups. Her PhD dealt with sexual violence against refugees. Commissioned by the Belgian government, Ines developed, piloted and evaluated the Belgian Care Centres after Sexual Violence. She also coordinated the first representative prevalence study on sexual violence in Belgium, the studies on sexual violence and refugees and developed a range of (inter)national clinical guidelines, prevention tools, procedures and trainings and regularly serves as an expert for various UN bodies and governments. She was awarded the Lucien De Coninck Prize and the Marie Poppelin Prize for her pioneering research with a major social impact .
July De Wilde
July DE WILDE is associate professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research focuses on multilingualism, intercultural communication in migration contexts, public service interpreting and the use of digital / non-digital tools as communication support during face-to-face interactions. She is particulalry interested in the exploration and assessment of the possibilities and (dis)advantages of a wide range of language support strategies that facilitate the communication between public service providers and culturally/linguistically diverse speakers.
Giacomo Orsini
Dr. Giacomo Orsini concluded his doctoral studies at the Department of Sociology of the University of Essex in 2016. Before joining Ghent University, he worked as postdoctoral researcher both at Essex and the Université Catholique de Louvain. Since 2015, he also teaches courses on migration, race, ethnicity and the politics of diversity at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. While Orsini’s most recent research is concerned with unaccompanied minors’ migration into Europe and the structural violence they face along their trajectories, he previously conducted research on institutional racism within family reunification in Belgium, and a series of field investigations in key locations of Europe’s migration regime. His studies concentrate on the (coloniality of the) everyday governance of migration and the multiplication of tangible and intangible borders of (racist) exclusion and inclusion. At CESSMIR, he coordinates both the ChildMove and the REFUFAM projects.
Ilse Derluyn
Ilse Derluyn is full professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium). Her main research topics concern the wellbeing of young refugees and migrants, unaccompanied refugee minors, victims of trafficking and war-affected children, both in the Global North and South. She has widely published and is also active in training and support for practitioners and policymakers. Ilse also gives counselling to refugees. She is also actively involved in UGent-policy, including the ’12th ZAP-member’ in the Board of Governors, and previously as member of the Research Council. Ilse was ERC-grant holder of the research project ChildMove (www.childmove.eu) and coordinated the H2020-project RefugeesWellSchool (www.refugeeswellschool.org). She is director of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) at Ghent University, and co-director of CCVS (www.ccvsinternational.org).
Ilse Ruyssen
Ilse Ruyssen is Associate Research Professor in Migration Economics at the Department of Economics of Ghent University and affiliated Research Fellow at the UNU-CRIS. Her research focuses on the factors shaping migration decisions and immobility (with particular attention for the role of climate change, health and retain factors), as well as the the implications of (non-)migration for the livelihoods of individuals and communities. She teaches various courses in migration and international economics at Ghent University, chairs the facultary Committee for Diversity and Inclusion, and coordinates the International Trade, Migration and Investment research group at her Department. Furthermore, she is the director of the CliMigHealth International Thematic Network, uniting scholars around the world from multiple disciplines working on the nexus between climate change, migration and health(care).
Evelien D’haeseleer
Evelien D’haeseleer, (she/her), is professor at the Center for Speech and Language Sciences at Ghent University and guest professor at the Musical Department of the Brussels Royal Conservatory. She works as a Speech Language Pathologist at the multidisciplinary gender team and ENT Department of Ghent University Hospital and is a member of the International Association of Logopaedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) and the European Professional Association of Transgender Health (EPATH) voice committee. Her main research areas of interest are speech and language disorders, multilingualism, transgender voice, effectiveness of voice training and voice in elite vocal performers.
Fazilet Canbolat
Fazilet Canbolat is a visiting researcher in the Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting Department at Ghent University. Her post-doctoral project, titled “A Fieldwork on Addiction within the Scope of Intersubjectivity: Ambiguous Symbolic Structures”, has been granted funding for one year by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). This project employs a qualitative methodology with an intersubjective perspective to study drug addiction among Turkish immigrants living in Belgium.
Floor Verhaeghe
I am the coordinator of CESSMIR. In this role, I foster collaborations between the various disciplines within CESSMIR and with partners outside of academia. My goal is to achieve societal impact as a result of these collaborations. I have a master’s degree in orthopedagogy and wrote my PhD in educational sciences at the department of social work and social pedagogy. My doctoral research dealt with integration and belonging in a multi- and intergenerational perspective. I also took a critical look at the concept of integration. After completing my PhD, I coordinated the research project ‘Childmove’, which focused on the impact of flight experiences on the psychosocial well-being of unaccompanied refugee minors. My research interests are inter- and multigenerational aspects of families with a migration background, psychosocial well-being of unaccompanied minors and integration.
Chloé Lybaert
I am an Assistant Professor of Dutch as a Second Language in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication. My research can be situated in the field of (developmental) sociolinguistics. In my PhD I studied linguistic laypersons’ perceptions and attitudes towards language variation in Flanders, with a focus on Colloquial Dutch (‘tussentaal’). For my PhD I only worked with native speakers of Dutch. As a postdoctoral researcher, I started to focus more on Dutch spoken by (adult) L2 speakers. I am interested in their experiences with learning and speaking Dutch in Flanders, and in the influence of Colloquial Dutch on their language learning process. In addition, I remain interested in attitudes and perceptions towards language use and variation, but nowadays I mainly focus on the effect of non-native accents, non-standard linguistic variation and ethnicity on attitudes towards speakers.
Ellen Desmet
Ellen Desmet is an Associate Professor of Migration Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. She founded and heads the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Her research is situated at the intersection of migration law, human rights and legal anthropology. She teaches migration law and ‘Law and Society’, and coordinates the migration law component of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic. Ellen Desmet complemented her law studies (KU Leuven) with a master in Cultures and Development Studies (KU Leuven) and a master in Development Cooperation (Ghent University). She holds a PhD in Law from the KU Leuven (2010) and previously held positions at the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre, the Law and Development Research Group of the University of Antwerp and the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University.
Eva Derous
Eva Derous earned her PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Leuven University. She worked at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and is currently employed as a full professor personnel psychology/HRM at the Vocational and Personnel Psychology Lab of the Department of Work, Organisation and Society at Ghent University. Her research focuses -among other topics- on recruitment and personnel selection procedures, with specific attention for diversity, inclusion and discrimination-related issues (ethnicity, age, and gender). She received a Fulbright research grant from the KNAW/Fulbright Center Amsterdam to stay at Michigan State University (USA), serves on editorial boards of several international journals, and has published in journals such as Personnel Psychology, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management Review. From an evidence-based perspective, she provides consultancy for companies and local business partners.
An Van Raemdonck
An is a social anthropologist and Arabist with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East and Belgium. Her research interests include contemporary social and cultural debates that revolve around globalization, diversity, identity, gender and religion/secularism. She holds a PhD in Comparative Science of Cultures from Ghent University (2016) and was guest professor at the Department of Middle East Studies (2017-2018). Her doctoral research investigated campaigns against Female Genital Cutting in Egypt in relation to religion. An worked in a collaborative anthropological research project on the shifting meanings and contexts of early marriage and pregnancy among Syrian refugees in Jordan (VU Amsterdam, NWO) and a comparative European project on Islamophobia and radicalisation in Belgium (Bilgi, EUI – ERC). She currently investigates Islamic ethics and conviviality in Western superdiverse societies. She is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (DiGeSt).
Bart Defrancq
Graduated as a Romance philologist in 1991, I successfully defended my PhD in 2002 in linguistics. In 2007 I moved to translation and interpreting studies. My research focusses on interpreting modes and interpreter-mediated forms of interaction in international institutions, in courts and police stations. I also investigate the impact of and interaction of interpreters with new interpreting technologies. My affiliation with CESSMIR stems from the research I carry out on police interpreting, where migration plays an important role.
Charlotte De Kock
Charlotte De Kock, MA, PhD, is a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. She teaches courses in qualitative research methods, critical criminology, and developed the course module ‘Diversity and Migration in Criminology’. Her research has focused for more than a decade on migration, with specific attention to access to healthcare and substance use services for this population. She has led several projects in this field (including PADUMI, SOCPREV and MATREMI), funded by FWO, BOF, Fedasil, Belspo and the European Drugs Agency (EUDA). Charlotte publishes regularly on these topics, aiming for both theoretical depth – on concepts such as equity and recovery – and impact on policy and practice. Since 2018, she has chaired the Diversity Committee of the Faculty of Law and Criminology, she is a board member of the European Xchange prevention platform (EMCDDA), and since 2024 she has been deputy member of the Board of Governors of Ghent University.
Ella van Hest
Ella van Hest is a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, where she is a member of the MULTIPLES research group. Her research interests include language and migration, multilingual communication, (non-professional) interpreting, and language policy. For her PhD project she conducted a linguistic ethnography on language diversity at an abortion clinic. Previous research (MA level) focused on the effects of Flemish language and integration policy on adult newcomers.
Lisa Maria Franke
Lisa Maria Franke is research professor in Islamic Studies at Ghent University in the Department of Languages and Cultures. Her research and teaching focus on the social and intellectual history of Islam and being Muslim in the modern Middle East. Before joining Ghent University in 2023, she worked as assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Göttingen on individual religiosities and non-conformist perspectives in Alexandria as part of the ERC Advanced Grant “Private Pieties”. She received her PhD in Arabic Studies in 2011 from the University of Leipzig. In this project, she conducted research on martyrdom, gender constructions and social discourses in Palestine. Subsequently, at the University of Cologne, she studied colloquial poetry and the religious, social and political content negotiated therein in the course of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, as well as meaningful symbolism in modern interpretations of the afterlife. In 2022, she held the professorship (interim) for Islamic Studies (Arabic) at Heidelberg University. Her research interests include everyday history, eschatology, faith and identity, discourse analysis and gender studies; individuality, religious transformation processes and social dynamics; modern Arabic literature; language as a form of mediation in various text forms.
Laura Schildt
Laura Schildt is a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in high-stakes language tests and policymaking in the immigration context. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Ghent, an MSc in Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford and a MA in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (US).
Marie Jacobs
Marie Jacobs is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of sociolinguistics. Next to a dedicated CESSMIR member, she is also part of the MULTIPLES Research Centre for Multilingual Practices and Language Learning in Society. Her doctoral dissertation presented a linguistic ethnography of the role of language in legal assistance to asylum seekers. She has published in international journals such as Language in Society, Journal of Pragmatics and Multilingua. Her research interests concern the role of language in settings of asylum and migration, the discursive dynamics of institutional encounters and the methodological intricacies of conducting qualitative research in superdiverse contexts.
Marieke Vanbuel
Marieke Vanbuel is a postdoctoral researcher of FWO Flanders attached to the research group MULTIPLES of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of UGent, and to the research group Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation of the Department of Educational Studies at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on language policy, second language acquisition and educational effectiveness. She has experience with research in contexts ranging from primary education to adult education.
Els Bekaert
Els Bekaert is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics at Ghent University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University – CRIS, affiliated to the Nature, Climate and Health and Migration and Social Policy clusters. She obtained her PhD in Economics at Ghent University in 2022. Her research explores how climate change shapes human mobility, focusing on how environmental shocks affect migration aspirations and decisions, and why many people remain in climate-vulnerable regions despite rising risks. She currently holds a three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) for her project “Towards a better understanding of climate (im)mobility” (Application no. 12A5424N). By combining georeferenced climate data with survey evidence, her work aims to nuance climate-mobility debates and inform policy. She is also affiliated with the international research network CliMigHealth.
Hilde Depauw
Hilde Depauw obtained her Master of Science in Psychology (Clinical Psychology) at Ghent University in 2020. In 2025, she obtained a joint PhD in Psychology and Sociology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Alain Van Hiel, Prof. Dr. Bart Van de Putte, and Prof. Dr. Piet Bracke. Her research interests include health inequities, culturally responsive mental health care, intersectionality, and the social determinants of mental health. Currently, Hilde is working as a postdoctoral researcher, studying how meaningful conversations about cultural identity are incorporated into psychotherapy and their effects on psychotherapy process and outcome variables.
Gaëlle Le Pavic
Gaëlle is a PhD Fellow at the Ghent University and the United Nations University CRIS. Her research documents and analyses the social consequences of not (fully) internationally recognised borders in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. She examines the accessibility of social welfare services in Transnistria and Abkhazia as well as in Samegrelo, with a focus on the role of civil society organiations (CSOs). Prior, Gaëlle has worked in project management and international cooperation in Belgium, Croatia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. She was also a researcher on EU funded projects related to the social aspects of migrations. Gaëlle has presented her work in international conferences, including CEEISA, BASEES and EUIA for which she was also the academic coordinator. She has lectured in at Ghent University, Université Libre de Brussels, Tbilisi State University, Georgia, and the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Argentina.
